Real Score Four Past City Rivals Espanyol

byPhilip MboyaonOctober 3, 2011

Barcelona might be sitting pretty at the top of the La Liga standings but the real story of the weekend was another sterling performance by Los Merengues. Real squeezed 4 unanswered goals past Espanyol to take them to within 1 point of table toppers Barcelona and Levante.

It is still too early to tell but all signs point to a 2 horse for the league’s top honor of the top scorer award. A look at the leader board reveals that Barcelona’s Lionel Messi leads the standings with 8 goals in 6 matches 1 more than perennial arch rival Cristiano Ronaldo who has scored 7 .

The only difference being the fact that 3 of Ronaldo’s goals have come from the penalty spot. Coming off bad results in his last 2 league outings, Mourinho was under pressure to stamp his side’s authority on their title ambitions by winning and he did that comfortably.

“We have managed to get out of a difficult situation,” Mourinho said during a post match conference. “We scored 13 goals in one week, I am happy for this team and especially for the players who had not been playing much and were fantastic today, like Lassana Diarra, Alvaro Arbeloa and Gonzalo Higuain.”

With the league taking a break for a couple of days to honour international fixtures, Mourinho can go into this break with confidence knowing that his side know their main priority this week.

“For me, it is as important to score as to work for the team.”

Never being the one to shy away from controversy, Mourinho said that Levante deserved the attention they were getting, if not more than Barcelona because of their achievement so far in the league.

“The team who deserve all the attention is Levante, because they are smaller [than Barcelona] and do not have as much prestige, they are worthy of it,”

On Barcelona’s slender lead this is what he had to say

“One point is one point, not ten. Obviously I would like to be in the lead by one point, but that is nothing.”